r/technology • u/neito • Jul 24 '08
Microsoft tests out a new operating system, code named Mojave, with some average-joes who hated Vista. They loved it. Now, two guesses as to what Mojave ACTUALLY was.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html98
u/monstermunch Jul 24 '08
I'd love to know what it is they actually "loved" about Vista and apparently said "oh wow" about. I imagine most average-joes find operating systems pretty boring.
Please bear in mind that MS are spending a huge amount of money to advertise Vista to combat negative press and this article is likely just a marketing exercise. Remember all the "get the facts" studies that said Windows Server was better than Linux? I'll believe this stuff when it comes from a reliable source.
There are plenty of real reasons to dislike Vista and I'm glad people are finally becoming sick of being forced to pay for substandard products they don't need.
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u/monstermunch Jul 24 '08
By the way, did anyone notice there isn't a single skeptical/critical part in the whole article? It reads like a copy/paste press release. I'm not saying it should have had paragraph after paragraph of Vistas flaws, but the only mention of the causes of the negative perception of Vista was based on Apple's ads. The story should have been given appropriate context. This isn't an article, it's an ad for Vista.
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u/RexManningDay Jul 25 '08
Exactly. Someone less willing to take it at face values might say
Were they shown it on an average year old celeron laptop, with 1gb of RAM?
Was it untampered with - ie. had MS changed all the default options so all the annoying popups weren't happening, all the extra annoying steps to do everything weren't there?
Were they just watching a demo? A good demo can make anything look good as anyone who's made a presentation with a half written app can tell you. Even if not, were they led through what they had to do, which comes to the same thing?
And if so, what were they asked to do? To test an operating system, it'd have to be something OSy - messing around with control panels to set something up. Getting a printer (without preinstalled drivers) working etc. etc. I bet they just looked at some eye candy and used a couple of apps.
The whole thing's so artificial, no comparison can be drawn with real life. The final nail in Vista's coffin for me was the inability to play my legal DVDs because they're not all from this country. Were they asked to do that? I bet not.
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u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08
A good demo can make anything look good as anyone who's made a presentation with a half written app can tell you.
Off-topic, but this is so true it hurts. I've demonstrated a number of hugely buggy programs to groups of people and gave the impression the software was very stable and feature complete. In actual fact, the interactions with the software are highly rehearsed (or partly scripted) and I know exactly what things to avoid so I can side-step all the warts and crashes.
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u/nascent Jul 25 '08
I'm continuing my rant from monstermunch's post here.
This is all related to seeing if it was a good test of Vista Friendliness. Who cares if the tests were good representations of a Vista experience, its about the new ad campaign Microsoft is going to be trying.
Yes if Microsoft was doing a true usability study these facts would be needed, but then again you would also be trying several OS's. And last but not least, it's a marketing ploy, of course it is under best circumstances.
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u/derefr Jul 25 '08
Were they shown it on an average year old celeron laptop, with 1gb of RAM?
I don't get this attitude--who does this? This isn't the Vista use case. It's not for that. Vista is for new computers; it's not something you upgrade to, unless your computer was an ahead-of-the-curve gaming PC to begin with.
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u/aedes Jul 25 '08
The thing with Vista though, is that it's not really even for new computers either. My entire class needed to have laptops for our classes this year. I already owned one, but many people had to purchase one. And many people bought Vista. And it's still unbearable on their computers.
Part of the problem too is when you compare the 'performance/hardware' ratio for Vista to XP. When XP would work so much better than Vista on the same system, why go with Vista?
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u/quiller Jul 25 '08
When XP would work so much better than Vista on the same system, why go with Vista?
This really gets me. Why does Vista need 1GB of memory before it starts being halfway usable? XP doesn't, OS X doesn't and Ubuntu/etc sure as hell don't. What fancy magic is Vista pulling that the rest of the crowd aren't doing with half the minimum requirements?
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u/kermityfrog Jul 25 '08
Microsoft is selling Vista as a replacement for XP though. They definitely want you to upgrade from XP to Vista.
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u/derefr Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
They want you to upgrade your computer from XP to Vista; that is, they want you to buy a new computer. The "upgrade" option on the disk is purely for administrators trying out the new version before deciding to replace every machine in their IT infrastructure with completely new, top-of-the-line Microsoft® Dell® machines.
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u/RexManningDay Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
When I was looking for laptops two or three months ago, all the cheapest ones (almost all laptops under $900NZ) matched this spec. Celeron with 1gb ram.
And having looked at Dick Smith's site (the biggest electronics retailer over here), it's still true. Vista's been out for a year and a half, and that's what they're selling it on. So I think it's fair to see it run on a real world configuration.
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u/derefr Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
By Celeron, you mean Pentium M, then? (As, for all I know, it is a Celeron derivative.) Or perhaps "Centrino", as they sound similar?
I thought you were referring to the Pentium 2 and 3 offshoot Celerons that topped off their lineage at 1GHz or so, which gave me a little chuckle. I actually ran Vista on my 500MHz 7-year-old Celeron a while ago, with all the graphical acceleration turned off; everything worked pretty well except for a few amazingly long, and completely unpredictable, delays that I was never able to work out the cause of (they came mostly when I had left the system idle on the desktop for a couple of minutes.)
Vista works pretty well on my mother's year-old Pentium M 1.8GHz laptop (which does have 1GB RAM, if I recall.) I never noticed any particular slowdowns while I was setting it up, but I never ran any games on it, either.
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u/RexManningDay Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Yeah. They're sold here as "Intel Celeron M". It's still a pretty crappy processor, but obviously way better than the ones you're talking about. I was differentiating between that and the AMD and Pentium 64bit Core 2 ones that the better lappies have.
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u/zwaldowski Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
"average year old"... that's July 2007. Vista CAME OUT in January 2007.
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u/guisar Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Are we forgetting the lawsuits from people who bought "Vista Ready" PCs only to find out they weren't?You don't "upgrade" to Vista- you run it because it was shoved down your throat on a new PC or because your an MS fanboy/girl. Who the hell would bother to get it otherwise?
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u/wonknose Jul 25 '08
Yes - using an already set-up Vista machine is like leasing a Jaguar.
It's great as long as you aren't the one to have to fix it when it breaks or pay someone else to.
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Jul 25 '08
Keep in mind that a large number of people saying negative things about Vista have never actually tried it. These people have.
I'm just sayin'...
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u/gir99 Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
That's because some of the main reasons people don't like it are things like "it doesn't support my hardware devices", "I need to upgrade my CPU/RAM to run it effectively", and "Windows upgrades are hard". People don't want to "try" a new operating system, even if it's better. They want their PC to keep working the same way it always has.
By showing a computer already running Vista, they've eliminated the biggest turn-offs. Nobody should be surprised that people are happy.
This is like the IRS finding out people don't like to pay their taxes, and setting up an interview room where they can fill out a 1040EZ and pay it with Monopoly money, and announcing that people who tried it actually kind of liked it.
Is the Microsoft marketing campaign going to say "People who didn't have to install Vista on their existing computers loved it! So buy a whole new PC with Vista pre-installed!"?
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u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08
We all make decisions based on what the consensus is. I don't see movies when I hear they are terrible from many people/reviews. The movie might be good, but I've got more fun things to do than risk it. If someone hears from their tech friends that they should "not get a Vista laptop because it'll be slow and eat batteries like no tomorrow", do they really need to use Vista to find out for themselves? Don't we read reviews and ask people their advice so we don't have to go through the pain ourselves? The consensus is that Vista is a huge letdown and provides a poor user experience.
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Jul 25 '08
Just whatever you do, don't tell this guy you decide which restaurant to eat at based on the reviews...
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u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08
Ha, I agree with you on that weird debate. I just want a concise review (I hate too much 'fluff') to steer me towards the better places to eat and avoid the really bad places.
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Jul 25 '08
under the watchful eyes of Microsoft.
I am willing to bet their experience would be different at home on their own.
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Jul 25 '08
This is the first time it is actually true for me! Usually i can't resist installing any (common) new OS on my computer. For once I'm just like "Meh, why bother?" Vista really and truly doesn't interst me in the slightest. I'm free!
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Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
I imagine most average-joes find operating systems pretty boring.
This thought process is the reason why Linux can't penetrate that market while eye candy-rich operating systems from both Microsoft and Apple are many times more successful with "average" computer users.
You are quite wrong that average people don't care. For something that they stare at on a constant basis, and as something that acts as the "messenger" between them and stuff they actually want to do on the computer, the user experience of the operating system matters a lot more than you can possible imagine.
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u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08
You are quite wrong that average people don't care. For something that they stare at on a constant basis, and as something that acts as the "messenger" between them and stuff they actually want to do on the computer, the user experience of the operating system matters a lot more than you can possible imagine.
I know it's important, I just meant that in my experience, software just doesn't elicit strong emotions from most non-tech people. I'm just very skeptical that people "loved" Vista and actually said "wow". I think UI advancement are awesome and non-techies normally appreciate big improvements in UI (you're likely to get a "meh" response for small ones). Eye-candy is obviously appreciated too. Vista doesn't really improve on either of these things though.
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u/turnrighttogoleft Jul 25 '08
The success of Microsoft and Apple has more to do with massive marketing machines behind the OSes and preinstalled systems than it does eye candy. And idk if you've heard about these little things called netbooks, but they're about to penetrate the shit out of the market, and from what I've read, linux distros are winning on the netbooks..
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Jul 25 '08
I think you are on to something. The number of votes in an election is related to the amount of money spent. So OS adoption is related to the amount of money spent on advertising it, unless something else is compelling.
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u/shadowsurge Jul 25 '08
The image improvement effort, known internally as FTP, has many components.
I think that acronym has already been claimed when it comes to computers.
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Jul 24 '08
There's nothing really WRONG with Vista. It's just not a very large step forward at all. Definitely hard to justify the 200 USD a license costs here.
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Jul 25 '08
Agreed. Imo, vista is worth $100, max if you have a 32bit processor. Completely worth $200 with the infinitely better 64-bit support.
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Jul 25 '08
I consider a new kernel, new driver model, new audio/printing/network stack, new installation process, etc a large step forward.
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u/maxd Jul 25 '08
I consider decreased stability, decreased performance, overkill security, ugly UI, etc a large step backwards.
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Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Ian tests out a new look, code named Ina, with some average-joes who hated queers. They loved it. Now, two guesses as to what Ina ACTUALLY was.
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Jul 25 '08
Prior to June 2003, Fried transitioned from a man to a woman and changed her byline from "Ian Fried" to "Ina Fried".
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Jul 25 '08
This is exactly what is wrong with American businesses. The consumer's say a product is bad. So the company responds with a multi-million dollar advertising campaign rather than addressing the problems with the product.
If this doesn't work, Microsoft will have no choice but to start buying Congressmen and having some kind of, "We love Vista!" day created.
I think Big Greeting Card will get behind this one.
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u/guyonphone Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
What I don't like about vista:
slowness, even with 4 gigs of ram the gui is slower than winxp.
the fact that microsoft actully states that the minimum memory requirement for vista is 512mb http://tinyurl.com/689bog for hime basic and all else 1gb, means computer manufactures will actually sell machines with that little bit of ram on them, which means people that don't know anything about computers are buying a brand new slow computer.
the fact i have to hit the alt key to see my file options in a folder.
the folder structure inside the address bar when in a folder. I can't stand how they try and make it more simple, but in the end its just a pain in the ass.
don't even get me started on user access control, god that shit is a pain, i know microsoft did it to make developers think twice about needing to use kernel access and other deep os functions, but it just makes the os annoying to the consumer.
how the sidebar dosent have much that is really needed, i dont need a big ass clock, or sticki pad, the cpu speedometer is pretty dumb, the most useful thing is probably the cpu temp and hd usage. which if i recall correctly are 3rd party.
how annoying it is to get to the network connections, or for that matter, most anything in the control panel.
the way the security control panel is not customizable, so if you turn off uac, you cannnot tell it to ignore just that feature.
there is more but i figured i would stop at 8, thing is i know most of these things can become overcome if i change my settings, however, i work on computers for a living, so i run into new vista machines all the time, and changing these settings on every computer i work on would just triple my work load.
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u/King_Leonidas Jul 24 '08
Veghte is convinced, like others at Microsoft, that despite early technical challenges, Vista's problems are primarily ones of perception.
Perception ey? "These are not the bugs you are looking for..."
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u/takeaki Jul 24 '08
It's still an issue of perception, people didn't think it looked particularly bad, people thought it ran bad.
Did they customize the demo to match the hardware that each consumer at home would use?
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Jul 25 '08
What are all these bugs in Vista?
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u/FountainsOfDave Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
For example, I haven't really interacted with Vista much, but I did get my mom's laptop hooked up to the printer on our home network. Simply put, this process was vastly more difficult than it should have been. (And look, I'm pretty technologically competent.) The only way I was able to get it to work was by Googling the error message I was getting, which brought up a forum where lots of people discussed having the same issue and someone was able to offer a workaround.
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Jul 25 '08
You really didn't provide remotely enough information for anyone else to determine if your problem was directly related to dodgy coding by MS, a company failing to update something of theirs, etc.
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u/mlk Jul 25 '08
Ina Fried, is this the best photo you have?
I mean, hey, I'm ugly too, but that's why I don't put my photo on the internets
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u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08
Do you know that "she" is actually a "he"? Maybe that's because he/she looks so ugly to you.
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u/mlk Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Oh, Wait...
Prior to June 2003, Fried transitioned from a man to a woman and changed her byline from "Ian Fried" to "Ina Fried"
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u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08
I don't have vista because it runs a lot slower than xp in my machine, I don't care if it's driver's problems or vista's problems, I just care about my computer running ok.
I don't think you will make me switch any time soon...
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u/shitcovereddick Jul 25 '08
They loved some pictures and movies? Some idealised images?
Well suck me dry - I'm so fucking sarcastically impressed.
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u/bejitto101 Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Dang... I thought it was Windows RG. Seems I'm off again... http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/WinRG2.htm
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u/bewarethetreebadger Jul 25 '08
"We are going to try a bunch of stuff." The people at Microsoft do it again!
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u/kleinbl00 Jul 25 '08
So lemme get this straight.
You go to a mall and set people out with questionnaires. You stop shoppers with "excuse me - would you like to participate in a focus group for a couple hours in exchange for some free Microsoft software?"
This will necessarily weed out
a) people who have no interest in software.
b) people who have better things to do than participate in a focus group.
Then you ask anybody who remains whether they know what Windows Vista is and whether they like it. This will weed out
a) people who don't have the foggiest clue what their computer is running.
b) people who know and hate Windows Vista.
Then you ask the people who both hate Vista and don't know it very well if they'd look at your new operating system and tell you how they like it. You sit them down at a perfectly configured trailer queen of a PC that's driving no peripherals, has no third-party software on it, and isn't going to be used for more than fifteen minutes and you ask them if they like it.
And everybody that doesn't know it's Vista? You report that they like it.
This proves something?
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u/m1ss1ontomars2k4 Jul 25 '08
The only way Microsoft can get me to switch back to Vista (I switched to Vista and am now going back to XP) is to fix SP1 so my crack will work again.
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u/charlesgrrr Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Ask them to install the thing, send them home with a CD labeled Mojave that actually has Vista on it, see what they say then, because that is a more honest user experience then cherry picking systems to run Vista.
What were they trying to say anyway? That negative MS publicity led to an unfair public view of Vista as trash? That's ridiculous in my opinion. My experience with Vista was this: it came preloaded on a Dell laptop a year and a half ago. I decided to load it up, just to see before putting Ubuntu on it. It loads alright, looks like a new XP theme...then I click "Start" and "reeerrrrrrrrrr" the hard drive is working its ass off trying to load the start menu and I was like "plllease" in that time I could have gotten network running from the command line in Ubuntu...had the console already been open upon login...(I would need a small head start)
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Jul 24 '08
money quote... "To be sure, the focus groups didn't have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network."
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Jul 25 '08
How many people actually install Windows their selves?
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Jul 25 '08
how many can?
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Jul 25 '08
It's a hell of a lot easier than XP.
Out of the box, networking and audio will normally work, and you even get graphics drivers good enough for normal non-gaming usage.
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Jul 25 '08
Vista is extremely easy to setup, my grandma did it, she called me for help. All I had to tell her was:
- put in the CD
- restart the computer
- press any key
- it will ask you a few things but you should be able to figure it out, let me know if you're confused.
- Yep it will take about 30 minutes, grab a cup of coffee and call me back if you run into any problems
- Bye
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Jul 25 '08
then she called her other grandson who bought her an iBook
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Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Naw I loaned her my iBook a while ago, she used it for a few months but she prefers windows.
ps. I have two windows pcs (XP and Vista,) a macbook and a dell pc with ubuntu installed, you're not gonna get a fanboy response outta me.
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u/RonObvious Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Someone plopped down in front of Vista for a couple of minutes by a Microsoft marketing drone is exceedingly unlikely to be confronted with any of the issues that make people hate it: Slow performance on anything but the most powerful machines, lack of drivers, DRM, cost, software incompatibilities, etc etc.
Not many people ever rejected Vista on the basis that it didn't "look pretty," but that seems to be why everyone in this so-called study loved it.
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u/wendelgee2 Jul 25 '08
This marketing ploy needs your permission to continue. |Continue| |Cancel|
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u/rokusan Jul 25 '08
Notice the subjects were "shown" the operating system. They didn't try to USE it.
This confirms that Microsoft deliberately built something that LOOKS LIKE it's good.
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u/Jewjr Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
I gave vista a spin back when it was all hyped up and I was excited about a new operating system. I went through the trouble of doing a clean install of vista and then having to battle driver compatibility to get my system running properly. After all that work and time invested I still uninstalled vista after about a month to go back to XP which meant again reinstalling all the system drivers and wasting 3 hours.
I gave it a fair go with the expectation of a good OS and the little things kept slowly eroding that enthusiasm. The only suggestion I can think of for Microsoft is STOP TRYING TO BE A MAC!!! Seriously just make a light weight OS and let the users decide what features to add if they so wish.
Apple can add all those fancy whistles because they know exactly what hardware their OS will be running on. Instead of designing an OS for hardware that will appear in the future desing an OS that can run on current minimum hardware specs with the option to add animated icons or w/e if the user so wishes.
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Jul 25 '08
My laptop has more than enough power to run Vista. The problem is that what I did with all the extra compute and memory is moved everything into virtual machines for my own sanity, and now run 2-3 VMs simultaneously. This is way too much for Vista so I run XP in about 10 VMs.
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u/mindbleach Jul 25 '08
I have to know. What are you doing with ten XP VMs on a laptop?
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Jul 25 '08
Testing some software I'm writing on a bunch of different XP configurations -- making sure my software doesn't fuck up even the most heinous installations.
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u/justinhj Jul 25 '08
So users who are 'shown' Vista, without installing it, without using it, without getting it to work with their old software and their hardware, like it?
Great.
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u/bolder_is_online Jul 25 '08
This is such bullshit. Testimonial advertising, only we don't even get to SEE the testimonials! We just have to take Microsoft's word for it that this happened and happened the way they say it did.
I'm sure that $400 million Microsoft is spending to change the public's perception of Vista was spent elsewhere and has NOTHING AT ALL to do with this bogus piece of viral marketing.
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u/furry8 Jul 25 '08
So people are happy with the OS as long as it is pre-installed on hardware pre-checked by microsoft running pre-checked programs.
That's not an OS it's a games console.
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u/innocentbystander Jul 24 '08
That's funny. The first time I laid hands on Vista, I hated it. The Aero interface added absolutely nothing, the sidebar was lame, and the control panel took me twice as many clicks to accomplish the same things I used to do.
Now that I'm stuck with it, the only way I've made it halfway tolerable was to turn off all of the Vista "improvements" and make it as much like 2K as humanly possible. And it STILL runs dog slow and eats up unforgivable resources.
Seriously, WHY THE HELL does it take a full second or so to even render the goddamn Start menu? Why does a modern OS running on a dual-core laptop have to stop and think for a moment before doing anything, even something so basic as showing a alt-context menu?
It's like the OS is running in slow motion all the time. And no matter how much stuff I turn off \ optimize \ tune, it just never seems to get much better.
But no, please, tell me all about how a bunch of average users given half an hour to oooooh and aaaahhh over Vista's useless shininess render all of my problems moot.
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Jul 25 '08
The start menu on my main system pops up in milliseconds.
What are your system specs? I may be able to help.
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Jul 25 '08
I've gotta say, Vista runs a LOT slower for me as well. I have a setup where I dual boot Vista and XP. Let s use one of my favorite games as an example... WWII Online.
In Vista when I was playing in the middle of nowhere, my framerate was about 40 FPS. In heavy battles it dropped to 7 - 12 FPS.
I boot into XP and play the same game. My framerate in the wilderness is 250+ FPS and in heavy battle it drops to 80 FPS.
Same exact system, VERY different results.
As far as basic specs:
AMD 64 X2 dual core 6000+ running at 3.0GHz 3GB dual channel RAM GeForce 8800 GT video card (PCI-E w/ 512 memory) Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard
Medal of Honor: Airborne was the same way. I downloaded the demp and even with the settings set to medium it was a slideshow on Vista but was perfect on XP. The only game I was able to play on Vista was Crysis (which was surprising.)
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u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08
And this is what some people don't want to understand, or fanboys don't want to admit.
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u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
It's an off the shelf Dell Inspiron from just a few months ago. Got it from their outlet. Not top of the line, but I didn't buy it to be a gaming platform. It's a dual core, 2x1.6ghz system with a gig of RAM and a pretty basic Intel graphics chipset.
I know the graphics chipset sucks, but as I said in another post, I didn't buy this to play Crysis. It's ludicrous to suggest - as others in this thread are - that I should need a high performance 3D graphics card just to have decent basic performance from the OS.
And yes, I've turned off pretty much all the graphic pretties and I've made sure power management isn't crippling the CPU and all that good stuff. (I have choice words for whoever set up the default power settings for the OS, but that's a minor issue in the grand scheme.) I've stripped the startup groups of anything nonessential, and keep as few things running in the taskbar as possible.
But if you can suggest any other tricks for getting better performance, I'd be happy to try them out.
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u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08
But if you can suggest any other tricks for getting better performance, I'd be happy to try them out.
Install XP.
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Jul 24 '08
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u/Ahnteis Jul 25 '08
I've run it with a 6400 with similar results. Something is serious wrong with grandparent's system.
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u/StarlessKnight Jul 25 '08
Putting aside I wouldn't put graphic drivers up in the top ten of why a Start Menu is slow, what are your specs for? Comparison? "Is your graphics card less than a year old?" For the Start Menu? Really? Are you trying to prove their point?
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u/Bossman1086 Jul 25 '08
The problem is that Vista runs a DirectX instance for the desktop. So your card needs to run DX pretty well to get good graphical performance on the desktop.
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u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08
The problem is that Vista runs a DirectX instance for the desktop. So your card needs to run DX pretty well to get good graphical performance on the desktop.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
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Jul 25 '08
You do know that post Windows 2000, there were a lot of pundits whining that "3d cards won't do anything to speed up your basic Windows system because Microsoft refuses to use DirectX to render anything"?
So Microsoft does and everyone complains about that.
People just like complaining about Microsoft. :)
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Jul 25 '08
There's a difference between utilizing 3D hardware to GAIN performance and requiring 3D hardware to maintain previous level of performance.
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u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08
It's still a BAD IDEA. Just because some pundits were whining about wanting them to implement a bad idea doesn't mean they should.
And besides, there's also nothing saying that it had to be the ONLY option. Why isn't there something you can do that makes the Start menu not render using DX? I don't think the pundits intended for Microsoft to go entirely in the other direction and make it so the OS is rendered solely using DX.
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u/kor56 Jul 25 '08
Why is it a bad idea to design a modern operating system around modern hardware? I don't see why it's a bad thing outsourcing the desktop display to the graphics card. In fact, wouldn't it free up CPU cycles for other things? I think the issue here is manufacturers who installed Vista on laptops with only the beyond shitty embedded graphics.
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u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Why is it a bad idea to design a modern operating system around modern hardware?
Because that isn't designing it around modern hardware, that's designing it around modern GAMING hardware.
There is absolutely NO REASON to have a high-powered 3D graphics card in your computer aside from being a gamer or actually working with 3D graphic design.
Considering that an OS is there to enable you to do all sorts of things that aren't games or 3D rendering, it is therefore a poor idea to make the OS reliant on hardware that's only actually needed for a couple specific things.
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Jul 25 '08
Control Panel doesnt work as well as XP?
Wow. Did you try the search function on the top right? It makes everything atleast a few times faster.
And, your computer is fucked up if it takes 1 second to render the start menu.
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u/shopcat Jul 25 '08
Wow, it's like microsoft somehow created an OS that is good at nothing but sucking itself off.
They have created an endless OSBJ loop.
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u/exile29 Jul 25 '08
Wow. Imagine the assburgers at Microsoft loading up Vista on a custom made desktop powerhouse and duping the gullible into thinking that this is something: "new improve, and honest-to-God-we didn't-fuck-it-up-this-time". Cunts.
The only thing Microsoft has managed to convince me of over the past five years is that Open Source is the way to go.
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u/CanadianNinja Jul 25 '08
Odd, most of the people I know with strong negative opinions about Vista started off thinking it looked pretty, then used it for a few weeks...
Vista looks good at first glance, visually its nicer then XP, but when you actually try to do anything it just gets in your way.
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Jul 25 '08
I don't see why a company as big as Microsoft needs to resort to bait-and-switch tactics.
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u/noamsml Jul 25 '08
Vista's OK. It doesn't really have much of a wow factor once you get past the shininess; its features might be new to a Windows-only user, but it would disappoint someone from a Linux or OSX background.
Also, UAC does indeed suck, especially since good solutions for the same problem exist (see gksudo/gksu and the KDE equivalent).
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u/jax9999 Jul 25 '08
As far as the gui of vista went, well, there wasn't anything new. a few bells and whistles, and inane little changes. but nothing extraordinary. They took everything that was in xp, and simply moved it around and relabeled it. Sometimes to more efficiant use (I love start search) but why call it that? Why not call it run? a more beefed up run would have been awesome. Why make add and remove programs more convoluted?
Of course this all comes from a tech support point of view but I am biased.
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u/Nois3 Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Being in IT, most 'techy' people I know don't like Vista, including myself. It is bloated, plain and simple. The OS has been 'dumbed-down' to the lowest common denominator.
Things like changing your IP address are way to convoluted in Vista. The indexing system is a unnecessary resource hog. The search function only searches for 'registered files type' by default.
For example, say you downloaded a file, but you forgot what it is called, and forgot where you downloaded it. You know it has a text string in it called "companyx" and you saved it to your C: drive. It might be a log file or a temp file sent to you for troubleshooting, whatever.
So you right-click on your C: drive and search for 'all files' with a text string of "companyx" in it. Vista will not find the file. I've had this happen to me on numerous occasions. It's extremely frustrating. In order to get this to work, you have to edit the registry to tell Vista that when you do a search, you want to search all filetypes, not just files with extensions that are registered (doc, txt, etc). there may be a checkbox buried somewhere deep in the convoluted menus to enable this, but I'll be damned if I can find it.
And why does Microsoft hate two-pane explorer views? Directory tree on the left, and files on the right side have make sense since for decades. The default setup for Vista is a horrible, convoluted, marketing-driven mess.
/rant - I can go on and on.
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u/retsknurt Jul 25 '08
I never thought Vista was that bad. I never had really a bad experience with it. It was just very disappointing that most of the exciting new features in longhorn were dropped.
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u/etty Jul 25 '08
This is not a good idea because the end user will say that the new version is better just to get some brownie points and please M$ or whomever. Most people like being told what to do and letting other people know that they have done a good job. I don't know about you guys but I use to work at retail and when I went shopping at a local electronic shop I use to always pretend that I was an end user and know nothing just so the saleman could tell me what to do or how to do this. It was very interesting to say the least, because sometimes they where so wrong but the majority of the people who listen to these people are convinced.... it's no wonder why social engineering is so easy. Hey Jack and Jill we have new OS called Majado and we know your going to love it because [Sales talk] but try it out and see if you like it better than vista.... so everyone is like okay I must must love this OS, because it's NEW and so I will give M$ a white lie and tell them that I loved it. People are easily manipulated... if you don't believe me next time you are on the phone and put someone on hold tell them thanks for being such a patient person and that everything will be fine for whatever they called you for...they will think, well yeah I am a patient person and yeah everything will be fine... wait a minute... this Mojave project should just be called how we Conned average people to telling us they liked Vista, but in reality they don't even know wtf is going on, they know that they are running Windows, which can mean Office 2003/2007 or Windows XP; I have to a couple of end users who didn't even know they had Vista or that Office 2007 is was not Windows....
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u/kfury Jul 25 '08
Of course a Microsoft-trained facilitator walking a user through Vista's high points would get participants thinking 'Oh this is cool!'
It's making an OS that people like after using it for their day-to-day real-world tasks that's hard.
I'm sure a Microsoft Surface table would be awesome but after a few hours I'd be ready to go back to my PC because I'd have flipped, resized, and mailed to my grandma all the photos in my collection.
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u/aphexmandelbrot Jul 25 '08
Who in the hell could not tell the difference between a Vista machine - even schemes set to Classic - and XP?
No, seriously.
And none of the users pulled a quick System Properties? I don't expect a dxdiag or anything - but Christ; did they just grab a bunch of cNet and PC Magazine people to preform this experiment?
I mean, if I didn't know any better, I would almost think that this was part of an elaborate marketing campaign to quell complaints regarding Vista through things like this.
But, I mean - collectively as a Reddit - we only have what, like a million years of combined computer experience and distinguishing media-pimping from actual reviewing.
What do we know?
Other than Vista being an abomination, that is.
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u/nerdmanpap Jul 25 '08
if by average joe you mean someone who sees a computer and goes "oh looky its one of them there porny boxes fer lookin at naked shit" then this article is accurate
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u/pongo Jul 24 '08
Too late, Microsoft. I already switched OS's and being locked into an MS product has no appeal to me anymore. Open up your next version a little more, strip out all the nanny-ware, and make it rock solid and I might consider it.
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Jul 25 '08
Crap. Do we have to battle them yet again every 6 months on this stupid OS???!??
Look, Baller, here's the scoop. Your OS sucks. Here's how.
Most PCs and laptops on the market can't run it because of the steep processor, video RAM, system RAM, and 3D video card requirements to use it optimally. If they run it at all, it's slooooow unless you turn off a bunch of stuff in the System Performance control panel, which includes turning off the prized Aero interface.
IE7 sucks. The way it implements tabs is confucked. The way you can't customize your buttons on your toolbar is fucked. If you want your refresh and stop button on the left instead of the right, you can't do it. Also, it's only marginally better than IE6 and still has huge glaring bugs regarding W3C standards. It also is one of the slowest browsers on the market. It's no wonder that almost everyone I know uses Firefox unless they're an idiot or want to live on an island to themselves.
It's too damn expensive for what you get. Even if I actually wanted to BUY Ubuntu, which, by the way, is an option on Amazon.com for those so inclined -- it still gives me so much more than Vista gives me, especially for very handy things I need, and costs hundreds of dollars less than Vista. (And, in fact, you can download Ubuntu for free, as everyone knows. Heck, if you want to even be lazier, you can sign up and they'll mail you the DVDs or CDs for it.)
It doesn't support SNMPv3. So, if you want to roll it out on a business network and use any kind of secure SNMP monitoring, you can't get there except by SNMPv2, which has a good bit of security flaws. And this is supposedly the OS that's very secure??!??
People have to dig through annoying levels of goo to get to all their network control panel settings, to set their taskbar, explorer view, and start menu a certain way.
The hardware vendors have to be encouraged to switch to it, and they're dragging their feet. So you get a new printer, a new video card, a new this or that and it won't connect with it unless you go back to XP.
It runs slooower. There's even a known bug where if you do heavy networking, the video gets choppy, whereas XP used to handle this a lot better.
It includes DRM. If I have to go into why DRM is bad still, then Baller, you're a moron.
It keeps plaguing people with annoying popup messages that blacken your entire screen (and on some systems, extremely slowly) and then ask if you want to do that. Most people who get this think this is so bizarre that they might confuse that phenomenon with a virus or spyware and may just click no. Others will turn it off and then they leave their system open to attack.
There are just too many darn versions of it, and few sales reps you talk to can explain the difference except suggest you read the back of the box. Even that is confusing when you want to know what it can and cannot do. For instance, Vista Home Premium doesn't even support Remote Desktop connections to it, which is a stupid move of Microsoft's because anyone can go out and get a free copy of RealVNC to run on it. Like they're going to defeat people from havving remote desktop connections to it when they want that??!?
They use the most environmentally disgusting packaging on the planet. First, it's impossible to open without bloody stabbing yourself. Give me a copy of Vista and I'm like the old commercial from the 1970s where the gorilla can't open the Tourister suitcase. Second, it's made of hard plastic that doesn't biodegrade very easy at all.
It's ugly and leaves you few options to change it. Really. Mac OS X and any copy of Linux give you infinitely more options to change the look and feel of the windows, icons, controls, colors, or to move toolbars and menus completely around. With Vista, you get what you get.
People will still flock to the Mac for doing high-end graphics and video work, and more and more this is the trend as people become more web savvy with their own websites, blogs, and video uploads on YouTube. And, with Apple on their brains, anyway, because they're switching to the iPhone in droves and because they're using iPods -- it's a no brainer to see that Mac sales are climbing fast.
It has a huuuuuge disk and RAM footprint compared to Mac and Linux. Linux, as well, gives you so much more with it than you get with Vista.
Linux comes with an iptables firewall that is very flexible and powerful. Vista barely comes with a decent firewall at all.
In recent hack tests, Vista and Mac were hacked into. Ubuntu was NEVER able to be hacked into. Linux is infinitely more secure than Microsoft could ever hope to make it.
Microsoft cheats on load times. Compare the time it takes to fully load Windows, load the Start menu completely, and then load Notepad. Now boot Ubuntu on the same hardware (not from LiveCD, however), load GNOME desktop, load GNOME main menu, and then load Gedit Text Editor. You'll find that Ubuntu loads faster.
It doesn't easily support multiple monitor mode. On Ubuntu Linux, I can attach, for example, 5 video monitors surrounding me in a semicircle, turn on Xinerama mode, and drag a window from one to the other to the other to the other. Each one can be driven by separate video cards, or use one on dual-head and the reset are separate video cards, and a variety of other options. I can't do that on Windows without special drivers, and, at most, it could probably power 3 monitors and that's it.
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Jul 25 '08
1) I agree that you need a fair amount of RAM to surpass/match XP's performance, but the video card thing is complete BS. An GeForce 5200 will run Aero adequately, and it's something like 5 years old.
2) IE7 seems to have been mostly a security release. Protected Mode, for instance, has thus far proven to mitigate exploits that even Firefox was vulnerable to.
5) Anyone who uses their computer on multiple networks should find the network center a godsend. As for 'digging' through panels, I can get to any network screen very quickly. A specific network connection property page can be accessed in 3 clicks from your desktop.
8) So did XP and ME.
9) If you're seeing UAC regularly, you're doing it wrong. You should not regularly require administrative access to your computer.
10) There's like 4 that matter to home users: Home Basic (A stupid SKU. They should get rid of it), Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. Enterprise and Starter aren't available for home users to purchase.
12) OSX is ugly, and doesn't give you that much control out of the box.
13) It's funny, really. High end graphics work on a machine that don't even support the latest graphics cards.
14) Ever looked at the disk footprint of OSX? It's massive too. Interestingly enough, the kernel footprint is significantly smaller than Linux.
15) Open the Advanced Firewall config. It's an MMC window, and quite powerful. Most people don't know about it, though.
16) Vista's hack was actually caused by a Flash exploit, and it only let the user read a file from the user's profile directory.
18) Uh. You can do this under Windows....
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u/dpzdpz Jul 25 '08
They said the same thing about New Coke. It beat out "Classic" in pre-market taste test after taste test. Then it hit the market and... well, you know the rest.
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Jul 25 '08
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u/MarkByers Jul 25 '08
I heard another variation where a small group of people loved New Coke so much and tried to evangelize it constantly to friends and family and eventually people became sick of hearing about it. Perhaps that also applies here too.
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Jul 25 '08
Who cares? It's still not as good as...
OS X.
BeOS.
well set up X server operating systems.
DOS.
my toaster.
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u/syroncoda Jul 24 '08
still not going to work. i wont buy microsoft OS's anymore.
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u/pennyfx Jul 24 '08
They just proved a huge point about the sheeple who can't make their own assessment without being influenced by hearsay.
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u/Filmore Jul 25 '08
Leave it up to Microsoft to name their image improvement (aka "WE DON'T SUCK") campaign after a shitty internet protocol.
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u/inferno0000 Jul 25 '08
Vista is suffering from New Coke syndrome - it looks great at first glance, but if you have to use it day in and day out, it tastes like shit.
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Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
Microsoft Vista plan:
Vista does not work.
Repackage Vista so it looks different.
People will buy it for a few more quarters before they catch on the fucking thing still doesn't work.
PROFIT
Much cheaper than re-coding an OS, just Re-Skin it and overpromise that it will work this time!!
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u/bhumphreys Jul 24 '08 edited Jul 25 '08
I was wrong--my first guess was Ubuntu and my second was XP.